Asylum, court and hospital interpreting across the US, booked by variety, Kurmanji or Sorani, plus certified translation of Iraqi, Kurdistan Region, Syrian and Turkish documents.
Prism Linguistics provides Kurdish interpreters, Kurmanji or Sorani as the speaker needs, for asylum interviews, immigration and state court hearings, depositions and hospital appointments anywhere in the United States, in person, by phone or by video, together with certified English translation of Iraqi, Kurdistan Region, Syrian and Turkish records for USCIS.
Last reviewed September 2, 2026 by Sarah J, Prism Linguistics
A Kurdish booking with no variety on it is a booking that has not been made yet. Kurmanji and Sorani are the two main forms of Kurdish, written in different scripts and far enough apart that an interpreter from Sulaymaniyah will struggle with a witness from Duhok, and nobody in the courtroom will notice until it is too late. So we ask, every time, and we ask where the speaker is from. Our office is in New York; Kurdish interpreters are on the network in Nashville and the other centers, and by phone or video everywhere else.
The 2020 Census counted around 25,000 Kurdish Americans and community estimates run past 40,000, with the largest concentration by far in Nashville, mostly Kurmanji speakers from Iraqi Kurdistan who arrived in waves from the 1970s onward, and further communities in Dallas, San Diego, Phoenix, Atlanta and the Detroit area. The Syrian war and refugee resettlement added Kurmanji speakers from Syria and Turkey and Sorani speakers from Iran and Iraq, and most of the Kurdish interpreting we do now is in asylum offices and immigration courts.
Kurmanji in Latin letters, Sorani in Arabic script. The two are not dialects of one another in any practical sense. Vocabulary, grammar and script differ, a Kurmanji speaker from Turkey and one from Syria will differ again in the Turkish and Arabic words they reach for, and a speaker from Iran may want Sorani or a variety we have to check for. The interpreter also needs the speaker's Arabic or Turkish, because documents and place names arrive in those languages.
Most Kurdish cases sit in the asylum office or the immigration court, and they turn on chronology: the date of an arrest, the name of a checkpoint, which armed group held which town in which year. The applicant has told the account many times and must tell it again exactly. An interpreter who smooths an inconsistency, converts a Kurdish place name into its Arabic or Turkish form, or supplies the word the applicant was searching for has changed the testimony. We match the variety and the region, brief the interpreter to render and nothing more, and never place a relative in the chair.
Kurdish has no court certification exam in any state. Tennessee's courts list it among the languages they receive interpreter requests for, and there and elsewhere a judge takes a registered or otherwise qualified interpreter. Beyond immigration, the work is family court, criminal matters and civil disputes in the communities where Kurds have settled. Tell us the court, the case type and the variety, and we send an interpreter the bench will accept. We are a private agency rather than a court-appointed vendor.
Hospitals in Nashville, San Diego and Dallas meet Kurdish patients every week and often route them to an Arabic interpreter because the chart says Iraq. An older Kurd from the mountains may have little Arabic, and a Syrian or Turkish Kurd may have none that is useful for a medical history. A provider that takes federal funds must supply a Kurdish interpreter at no cost. We assign by variety, send a woman interpreter for obstetric and gynecological care on request, and put a person in the room for diagnoses, consent and mental health assessments, which are frequent in a community with this history.
Most Kurdish document work is Iraqi paperwork under a Kurdistan Region header. The civil status identity card, the nationality certificate, the unified national ID that is replacing both, and birth and marriage certificates come in Sorani, in Arabic, or with both on one form, and a translator working only from Arabic leaves the Kurdish half blank. USCIS does not require the Iraqi foreign ministry's attestation that an embassy would, but it does require every field, stamp and seal in English. Records from Turkey are in Latin script with Turkicised names; records from Syria may be a civil registry extract or nothing but a UNHCR registration from a camp. One person, three spellings. Muhammad on an Iraqi card, Mehmet on a Turkish one, Mihemed in Kurmanji, and a US officer sees three people. A name mismatch is the usual reason a Kurdish file draws a Request for Evidence, so we spell to the passport and note every variant on the original. The service is at certified translation.
Tell us the date, the city and the setting, or send a clear scan of the document. We reply with a fixed price and, for interpreting, a named linguist. Call +1 (833) 282 8883, email info@prismlinguistics.com, or use the quote form and you will hear back within 60 minutes during business hours.
Our only office is in New York, and our Kurdish interpreters work nationwide. For in-person work we assign someone based in or near the city. These are the areas where Kurdish work is concentrated; the full list of 288 cities is below it.
Prism Linguistics is rated 4.6 out of 5 across 67 client reviews for its interpreting and translation work in the United States. That is the company-wide figure; we do not publish a separate rating per language because there is no honest way to measure one. If a Kurdish assignment ever falls short, tell us and we put it right.